Last week, a mother from South Shields said something about modern Britain that should haunt everyone who hears it. It was Caroline Curry, mother of Liam, the 19-year-old boy who perished in the Islamist bombing of the Manchester Arena in May 2017, alongside his girlfriend, Chloe Rutherford, who was just 17. In an emotional statement following the publication of the third and final volume of the Manchester Arena Inquiry’s vast report on that grimmest of atrocities, Mrs Curry said she would spend the rest of her life trying to protect her other children – ‘because, as we found out through this process, once you leave the safety of your home, you are on your own’.
